CAMERA IS 40 (1979 2019)
Nineteen seventy-nine. The last year of a decade which tends to be known for not much more than the ten years that separated the 1960s and 1980s. It was the year that the USA and China first established full diplomatic relationships. Punk rocker Sid Vicious died at just 21 of a heroin overdose. Margaret Thatcher became the first female prime minister of the UK. The Sony Walkman made its debut in Japan. Michael Jackson released his first big hit album Off The Wall and, coincidentally, Pink Floyd’s new concept album, launched a few months later, is called The Wall. The Monty Python crew create controversy with their film The Life Of Brian. And an Air New Zealand DC-10, on a scenic flight over Antarctica, crashed into Mount Erebus, killing all 257 souls aboard.
In Australia, Malcolm Fraser is prime minister. International Space Station-forerunner Skylab returns to earth with the burning debris ending up in Western Australia. The St George Dragons are NRL premiers, and Carlton wins the AFL (then VFL) grand final. Peter Brock wins the Bathurst 1000 motor race by a record six laps (the fourth of a nine victories at Mount Panorama, both records still unbroken). England beats Australia 5-1 in The Ashes series (sorry, couldn’t resist that one). And actor Heath Ledger is born. So is a new photography magazine called Camera Craft which arrives to challenge the long-established Australian Photography (still going too) and Photoworld.
As it happens, Camera Craft’s publisher was UK-born Paul Curtis who had defected from Photoworld to start his own photography magazine. Paul knew a bit about being at the pointy end of a ‘Volume 1, Number 1’ issue as he’d been at the helm of Photoworld when it began life in early 1978 as Australian Hi-Fi’s Photographic magazine. The title change came in 1979, and, in 1996, the publishing rights to the flagship Australian Hi-Fi magazine were eventually sold to Horwitz Publications which, in 2008, was subsequently acquired by Wolseley Media and this entity has since evolved into Nextmedia, the current publisher of Camera (and now, incidentally, owned by the Munich-based Forum Media). Coincidentally, Australian Hi-Fi magazine is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, its first issue appearing in 1969. For the record, Camera’s original proprietor, Iris Publishing, was sold to Horwitz in 1987 and, logically, has followed the same route as Australian Hi-Fi to today’s ownership. Keeping up? Such swings and roundabouts have been the stuff of print publishing over the last couple of decades, but more about that later...
Photography Can Be Fun
In the first issue of , Paul Curtis introduced the ‘gang of four’ behind the new magazine which included writer and photographer Trevern Dawes raison d’etre was based on the motto “…that photography can be fun”.
